FAQ 180271
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How do I create a catalog?
Question

How do I create a catalog?

Answer

Procedure

  1. On the home dashboard, click the Catalogs tab.
  2. Click Create Standard to create a standard catalog. Ariba Network displays the first page of the Ariba Network create wizard.
  3. Enter a unique catalog name and a brief description of your catalog. Customers can search for catalogs using this information.
  4. To classify the products and services in your catalog, do the following:
    1. Click Add in the Commodities section. Ariba Network shows the Product and Service Category Selection page, which lists product and service categories, based on the United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC).
    2. On the Search tab, enter a keyword or search phrase and click Search, or click the Browse the Categories tab to drill down through commodity families, classes, and individual commodities.
    3. Choose a product and service category level, and click Add. The My Selections area shows the selected product and service category level.
      LimitationsIf you are a supplier of all the items in a given product and service category level, choose the name of the higher-level product and service category instead of adding all of the lower-level product and service categories. For example, a furniture supplier should choose the category “Furniture and Furnishings” not the hundreds of individual items it sells. Customers can search for this information.
    4. To search for a product and service category by keyword, click the Search tab.
    5. Enter a search keyword and click Search. Choose a check box to select a search result, and click Add.
      The My Selections area shows the selected product and service category segment.
    6. To remove a selected product and service category segment, choose the check box next to the product and service category segment in the My Selections area, and then click Remove.
    7. Click OK.
    8. Click Next.
      The Subscriptions page in the catalog wizard lists only customers for whom the catalog is qualified. If you know customers are registered on Ariba Network, but you can't see them, contact them directly and ask them to grant you permission to see them.
  5. Choose who should see your catalog:
    • Private: Ariba Network makes your catalog visible only to customers that you specify. You can choose this option for catalogs that contain contract prices. This option automatically creates a subscription to the catalog for all customers you choose.
    • Public: Ariba Network makes your catalog visible to all customers. To receive a catalog, a customer must establish a relationship with you.
    NoteIf you set the visibility to Private, you can choose customers or customer groups, which creates the catalog subscriptions and automatically notifies the selected customers by email.
  6. To punch in to your customer's site and view the catalog content rules specified by your customer, click the View link in the Catalog Validation Rules column.

    Click Done to return to the catalog creation wizard on Ariba Network.

  7. Click Next to reach the Content page.
  8. Click Browse to choose a catalog file to upload.

    You can download the catalog template in this step.

  9. Click Validate And Publish.
    NoteLarge catalog files can take a long time to upload, depending on the speed of your network connection. When uploading very large catalogs, you might encounter timeout errors. To avoid these problems, you can zip your catalog files to compress them, which substantially decreases upload time. Zip catalogs in CIF and cXML format that are larger than 10 MB to avoid a timeout error. Ariba Network automatically unzips catalogs after upload. You can use any zip utility, such as WinZip. Each zip file can contain only one catalog, and the filename extension must be .zip.

    Your web browser uploads the file to Ariba Network, validates and publishes it. Do not navigate in the browser window until the next page shows up, as interrupting your web browser aborts the upload process. Your customers are subscribed to the current catalog version and are notified of its availability.

Next Steps

After Ariba Network uploads the catalog, you can do the following:

  • Review and fix CIF catalog errors (for cXML catalogs, you must edit the catalog file and repeat the upload process)
  • Qualify the catalog for additional customers
  • Perform catalog management tasks, such as editing, downloading, and deleting catalogs

After Ariba Network completes validation, it changes the catalog status from Validating to one of the following statuses:

  • Validated means that your catalog is error-free.
  • Published means that your private catalog has been validated and published.
  • Errors Found by means that Ariba Network detected catalog content that violates syntactic validation rules, standards-based semantic validation rules, or a customer’s catalog rules.
Additional Information

To view a Quick Tip video on this topic, click here.


Applies To

SAP Ariba Supply Chain Collaboration
SAP Business Network

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